The invention relates to an apparatus for dispensing stamps and more particularly to apparatus for dispensing stamps in response to a serial data transmission from a sender for the dispensing of a selected number of stamps.
There are a number of issued patents for different stamp dispensers for vending stamps. Typical devices are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,655,109 issued to Stevens, U.S. Pat. No. 3,548,991 issued to Flubacker, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,040,510 issued to Peters, et al. Such devices use a feed wheel or drive roller which is coin-actuated and which rotates for a predetermined number of steps to feed a strip of stamps in step-wise increments through an aperture of the device. The number of stamps dispensed is counted by counting the number of steps of rotation of the wheel by the use of microswitches or by the use of solenoid latches and a counting wheel. None of these conventional devices is suitable for use in a post office window operation where it is desirable that the dispensing operation be entirely controllable by a computer.